The editors of Sudden Denouement Literary Collective know that our strength is our writers. We hope that you enjoy getting to know them through our new Writer Interview Series.

What name do you write under?

Aurora Phoenix

In what part of the world do you live? Tell us about it.
I live split between Dayton and Cincinnati, OH, USA. I enjoy the ease of access to nearly everything I need, while I find the viewpoints to be often a bit conservative. The most important defining characteristic of home to me is the location of my loved ones, so this is home.

Please tell us about yourself.
I am a professional career woman, mother and partner. I am in the process of rebuilding my life after an incarceration, and work multiple jobs as I regain my footing. I love to travel, including immersing myself in nature, experiencing new places, and photographing those experiences. There are never enough hours in the day to do all that I want and need to do. The most baffling thing that anyone can say to me is that they are bored. How is that possible in world so full of possibilities?

If you have a blog or website, please provide the name and the link.https://auroraphoenixdoc.wordpress.com
When did you begin your blog/website, and what motivated you start it?
My blog was begun for me, while I was incarcerated. I was writing daily, for the literal survival of my soul, and mailing my work home. Family members were encouraged to create a blog. After I returned home, I picked up the blog myself. It took me a while to begin interacting within the blogging community.

What inspires/motivates you to keep blogging on your site?
I have various motivations to continue blogging. One is the desire to continue to hone my writing, as I would eventually like to publish a book of my own work. I also greatly appreciate the community with which I have become connected on WordPress. At times, I am inspired to write by experiences in my daily life. At others, I am inspired by the work of other amazing writers and am prompted to write by their pieces.

When did you join the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective?
I was invited to join one of Sudden Denouement’s sister sites in spring of 2017. I later joined with several other writers in creating Blood Into Ink, another affiliated site which highlights work related to trauma survival.

Why/how did you join Sudden Denouement?
I had found Sudden Denouement as I began to interact among WordPress writers and was greatly impressed with their work. I submitted a piece to a writing contest and was astonished and thrilled to place within the top 10 pieces submitted. I remain immensely honored to be a part of such an incredibly talented group of writers.

What does “Divergent Literature” mean to you?
To me, Divergent literature means writing without being harnessed to rules, whether they be of genre, syntax or rhythm.

SD Founder Jasper Kerkau frequently talks about Sudden Denouement writers using the ‘secret language’. What is it?
The challenge with any secret language is in the translation. While it may read differently for each of us, it is the gusted spray of our carotids upon the page.

What are your literary influences?
This is a tricky question, since I began college as an English major and ended that in disgust after a semester in which my professors forced interpretations of various works as all revolving around sex and death. (I became a psychology major and rehashed that argument with Freud.)
I would have to say, for sheer determination, Anne Frank.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, to whom I credit a lifelong love of reading.

Has any of your work been published in print? (books, literary magazines, etc.) How did that happen?
A had 4 pieces published in an Anthology last year, The Poetic Bond VII. I submitted in response to a call for submissions and had several pieces accepted.

Do you have writing goals? What are they?
While I would love to eventually have a book of my own work published, my greatest goal for my writing is that is speaks to people. I do hope that my writing also creates greater awareness regarding the injustices rife within the criminal justice system.

Which pieces of your own writing are your favorites? Please share a few links.
Another challenging question. Often when I write it has the quality of giving birth – it is laborious and intimate and intense – and when I am done, I don’t look back. Then sometimes when I do re-read old pieces, I am surprised 😊.DreamingCuts of SilenceStillTrouble in the Keys

What else would like to share about your writing, Sudden Denouement, or yourself?

When I was a child, being a writer was one of my dreams. For many years, it went unrealized. I am ecstatic that I can now call myself a writer.

Being a member of a writing collective has many benefits. One of these perks is the opportunity to write with other amazing writers, which is both creatively stimulating and challenges us to write our best work. Collaborations are something we do very well at Sudden Denouement and we have some very exciting collaborations coming up for our readers in August in honor of reaching our second anniversary on WordPress.

Many of our collaborations are planned but sometimes the most amazing things can happen organically among writers. Earlier this week, Kindra M. Austin wrote a piece for Blood Into Ink, which inspired Aurora Phoenix to write a response poem for Whisper and the Roar, which then inspired a group of really talented writers to keep writing. The Editors at Sudden Denouement think that this informal collaboration is something really special and we would like to share this group of powerful poems with you today. We hope that you are as inspired by them as we were.

i picked up my pen and out came all of me.
it poured and poured,
filling space with untrained words and anarchy,
sharpened love, feelings bent,
a keenness breathed without judgement,
ink balled with mercy
into something of me that might speak in truth.
but you sat and held your cup,
and watched it spill.
you put it in your cabinet
with a yellow note: ‘could do better.’
i would those curling lips
might taste the poison in the teacup
between your eyes;
that is where the horror really lies.

You must be new here, because tact and common decency seem lost on you. You see, it is not okay to call a woman by any other name than the one she has given — so don’t call me Baby and I won’t call you Tiny. It is not okay to insert yourself in my life and assume I need your sage advice — if I want to know, I will ask. Do not presume to know what I am thinking, or what my heart is trying to say — because you can be damn sure that if I wrote the words, I meant each and every one of them. I’m not perfect, and I never claimed to be, but I don’t need a lecture on semantics or grammar — I’ve had more than enough schooling and experience to know my own mind. But, if you really are new here, remember this one simple rule: if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.(Sarah Doughty)

I run barefoot
past the bronzed statues
idols of deontological divination.
I am a rule-following rebel
tracking muddied toes
between the pews
in which I have long since
refused to kneel.
I gave up self-flagellation
for Lent
the year I was sixteen
though those reflexes
to don needless
sackcloth and ashes
twitch, regenerative,
and the hair shirt
constricts
my free spirited
flights of fancy.
I labor
toward fictional salvation
yoked under twined heritage:
an inexhaustible work ethic
protesting
my non- Protestant roots
while I lug the chiseled tablets
writ with my Catholic guilt.

I have walked the straight and narrow
heel just beyond toe
slow and steady
concentrating
hands held just so
contriving delicate
equilibrium
quivering –
the fallen branch is wobbly
surging water below
frigid, if not deep.
that limb I went out on
felt a mission
no lark nor miscreation.
there was vine-shrouded rot
a shattering fracture
my immersion
was fire and ice
and long cold days in hell.

my moira is yet spinning
in threads of silken sterling
burlap intertwined
shimmering as it scrapes
defenses from my skin.
invisibly tethered
to the spindle and its webbing
I meander on my way.
there is play in the line
so I run barefoot
past the patinaed busts
effigies of deontological deities
laughing with windswept hair
trailing violet petaled poems.

[Aurora Phoenix is a wordsmithing oxymoron. Staid suburbanite cloaks a badass warrior wielding weapon grade phrases. Read more of her confabulations at “Insights from Inside.”]

he is sleeping
fetally curled
as the narrow bench allows
hairily bedraggled
a forlorn green bean
hopelessly lost in a crisper corner.
insensible to the hubbub
lurch oblivious
sea legs unconscious.
his story has uncracked bindings
though I inescapably
draft this chapter
unimaginatively entitled
“homeless”
subtitled
survival strategies for bitter blustery days

they wear their privilege
like their pancake
precisely overdone
accentuating blemishes
it purports to mask.
like spanx in overtime
containing wayward bulges
they convulse in paroxysms
suppressed schoolgirl giggles
as they selfie mock him –
these southern belles
similarly lionizing
life’s half century
in the city
that will never sleep

do I,
in the crushed velvet burnout
that is my poetic soul,
bear closer resemblance
to an urban misfit
escaping frigidity
cloaked in congealed
eau de shame
than I do
the pungently judging
glam squad clique
clicking and cackling
in cringe-worthy
mean girl couture?

I hope,
fervently as the guillotine bound
damned
pray for salvation
that I do

[Aurora Phoenix: I spent over 2 decades as a clinical psychologist, prior to the decimation of my world when I was suddenly incarcerated 2 and a half years ago. My writing was born in that caged existence – not a choice but a soul-saving necessity. I write as Aurora Phoenix at Insights from “Inside”]

[Aurora Phoenix: I spent over 2 decades as a clinical psychologist, prior to the decimation of my world when I was suddenly incarcerated 2 and a half years ago. My writing was born in that caged existence – not a choice but a soul-saving necessity. I write as Aurora Phoenix at Insights from “Inside”]

in art
I come alive
when I put my pen down
it’s all uncharted territory
obfuscated scriptures
obstruct my script
with indecisions
and honed inhibitions
I vomit
unintelligible words
ineligible to decipher
paraplegic
cryptic
paralysis in my analysis
a jargon
too far gone
from consciousness
I thrive
in poetic nooks
inhaling the sustenance
of literary lore
I shrivel
when my fingers
relinquish their perch
click-clack pecking the keys
I lose my footing
skid and wander
meandering Neanderthal
grunting monosyllabic
monotonous monotone
bungled from gnarled
arthritic fingertips
aching hips
collide coccyx
cogitating
insensate sensibilities
incongruous
in a house of congress
homo sapiens
barred from sapience
I am a refugee
seeking refuge
in the allure
of a nom de guerre

[ A.G. Diedericks is a cinephile in the midst of being gentrified into a bibliophile.. Colonized by mediocrity; He moonlights as a clandestine writer. You’ll find him in a dark alley over at the cuckoo’s nest; where he often lays to rest in Cape Town, SA. ]

&&&

[Aurora Phoenix: I spent over 2 decades as a clinical psychologist, prior to the decimation of my world when I was suddenly incarcerated 2 and a half years ago. My writing was born in that caged existence – not a choice but a soul-saving necessity. I write as Aurora Phoenix at Insights from “Inside”]

[Aurora Phoenix: I spent over 2 decades as a clinical psychologist, prior to the decimation of my world when I was suddenly incarcerated 2 and a half years ago. My writing was born in that caged existence – not a choice but a soul-saving necessity. I write as Aurora Phoenix at Insights from “Inside”]

[Aurora Phoenix: I spent over 2 decades as a clinical psychologist, prior to the decimation of my world when I was suddenly incarcerated 2 and a half years ago. My writing was born in that caged existence – not a choice but a soul-saving necessity. I write as Aurora Phoenix at Insights from “Inside”]